Longtime Knopf Exec Paul Bogaards Launches New Public Relations Firm; LBJ Biographer Robert Caro, Joan Didion Estate On Roster

deadline.com:

Paul Bogaards, whose departure from Alfred A. Knopf earlier this month brought a close to his 32-year career as a publicity and marketing exec at the publishing house, is already on to the next chapter: Bogaards announced today the launch of his new company, Bogaards Public Relations LLC.Clients already lined up include authors Robert Caro, Dani Shapiro and Clémence Michallon, The Joan Didion Estate and The Sonny Mehta Fellowships in Creative Writing.In an email to colleagues today, Bogaards describes the model for the new company as “a long runway business, not a quick fix shop.”“If you are looking for someone to book a tour – that’s not us,” he writes. “Think of us as project managers – with you, your work, or your company as the project.

Our mission is to help writers broaden their readership through careful analysis of their work and by developing long arc campaigns for their books and identities.”Bogaards will be joined in the new venture by Stephanie Kloss, a Knopf advertising and marketing executive before she relocated to Vermont several years ago. “We were partners on many bestselling campaigns at Knopf,” Bogaards writes, “and we are partners again at BPR.”As is typical of Bogaards’ frequent letters to colleagues, the latest shares some candid insights.

He traces his decision to leave Knopf to the day he “was scheduled to attend a meeting about meetings.”“Stepping away from a good job at a great company and the security attendant with it after three-plus decades is a leap for sure,” Bogaards writes, adding that, in addition to the meeting about meetings, the “other prompt had to do with the job itself: when you assume a position of management, you often become removed from the work you love doing most.